


The Big Chill

by swat117



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ice Age, Blizzards & Snowstorms, Dark Humor, Discussion of Death/Loss (no character deaths), Frostbite (also a metaphor), Happy Ending, Hypothermia (it's a metaphor), Ice, Kissing as plot device, M/M, Seasonal Affective Disorder, Snow, The world isn't ending David just thinks it is, if it's cold then we've got it, situational angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:40:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27762394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swat117/pseuds/swat117
Summary: David Rose learns to thaw while being chilled.❄️ A modern-day Ice Age AU. ❄️
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 67
Kudos: 145
Collections: Schitt's Creek: Frozen Over (2020)





	The Big Chill

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [SCFrozenOver2020](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/SCFrozenOver2020) collection. 



> **Prompt:**  
>  Instead of endless summer, the residents of Schitt's Creek are clinging to survival through an ice age. It's up to you if it's the historic one or a fictional one. Build the world however you want!
> 
> * * *
> 
> There are a few dark themes (depression, loneliness, discussions of death, injury) running throughout but nothing touched on too deeply, and a total happy ending. As Distractivate said at the start of their apocalypse fic [Blackbird, Fly](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20495591): "Ultimately, this is about a world coming back to life, not a world dying." I think that applies here. 
> 
> A true ice age takes centuries to form. It wouldn’t happen as quickly as I've thrust it upon our hero, but I wanted to tell a story about how life arrives and decides things for you. (Hmm, where have we seen that before?) All this to say, I appreciate your slack surrounding some of the science here. :) I promise I did google things. But mostly… it’s a metaphor.

Life is not for survival; it is for joy.  
_St. Francis of Assisi (kinda)_

**FIRST DELIVERY  
JULY  
YEAR 2**

When the first government water ration shows up, David’s so happy he could kiss the delivery guy. So happy that he does.

It’s passionate, more than he meant it to be. He buries his hands in the polyester of the NERS uniform coat and pulls the guy in before he can think better of it. There’s a faint, surprised gasp against David’s lips and then they’re both pressing into the kiss for one second, two seconds, three—

David comes back to himself, elation evaporating and replaced with regret. He pulls away slowly, like trying to unstick a tongue from a frozen pole, careful not to rip the skin. Though, he swears the guy chases him with his lips, chin jutting out towards David as the space between them grows. Maybe he’ll get out of this without being slapped.

Before he can apologize, the stranger speaks up. His cheeks are flushed from the cold and he’s looking down at his feet. “Thanks.”

David’s lips are still buzzing. “For what?”

“Uh—”

“Stop. You don’t have to answer that.”

The guy brings a hand up to his neck and laughs nervously. _Patrick - Badge #13._ It’s stitched right there on his chest in sky blue thread.

“What I mean is, I’m very sorry about that. I just love… um, water.”

Patrick laughs again and it makes David smile, though he bites it shut. “Well then. Patrick Brewer, reporting for duty.”

David’s smile creeps open as Patrick gives a playful salute. “Looks like I’m in good hands.”

Alexis interrupts them. “David, stop hogging the waterboy. This is a big day for all of us.”

“I’m not _hogging_ him, Alexis, I just opened the door when he knocked. Because unlike you I’m a generous person.”

“I lent Paris a pair of Miu Miu’s when she broke a heel on the Roca Sagrada, and _never_ asked for them back. What do you call that?”

“Desperate?”

Alexis scoffs and turns to Patrick. “So sorry about my very rude brother. You’d think an ice age would like, chill him out, seriously.”

“I’m very chill!” David shrieks. Maybe not his best argument.

Alexis scrunches her nose at him.

“So, uh.” Patrick’s eyes bounce between them. “I’m just gonna go, do my—”

“Yeah, Alexis, stop hogging the waterboy.”

“Ugh,” she huffs, and stomps away.

Patrick is still idling at the door. He looks a bit shell shocked. “Family,” he shrugs.

“Well, I will not apologize on her behalf, but I am seriously sorry. On _my_ behalf. About the whole, mouth-attack thing.”

“It’s okay, um—?”

“David. David Rose.”

“Nice to meet you, David Rose.” Patrick straightens and holds out a hand. David, suspiciously, shakes back. “Now, I hear you’re a fan of water. Why don’t I do something about that?”

The prospect of eau sweet eau is enough to snap David out of how charmed he is by this stranger at his door, so he leaves Patrick to it and shuts himself back into the small motel room, only slightly warmer now that the door is closed. Still, like always, he’s wearing his coat inside.

There were plenty of things to adjust to in their new icy reality, like indoor outerwear. And also: fucked up cellular satellites, unreliable electrics, the lack of fresh produce, not being able to travel beyond where they can walk. Six months into the chill, David was startlingly used to all that. But then the pipes froze, and David saw his life flash before his eyes. The end. Natural hot springs in Iceland, that time in the outdoor shower at Como Shambhala with Leif and Maple, the scene in _A Star is Born_ when Gaga shaves Bradley Cooper’s legs. Every steamy, damp, humid memory laid to rest. It had been small-batch boiled snow ever since.

And wasn’t that a metaphor for David’s life the past year—losing the family’s fortune and combating an apocalyptic world-freeze at the same time. Now he scoops up the frosty arbiter of his fate, packs it into a metal pot, and holds it over an open flame until it’s palatable. Repeat daily. It never tastes like fresh water, like New York tap or the bottle offered for free in the dressing room at Maxfield’s. You can taste what it used to be. You can taste what it’s not.

David actually used to like snow, like winter, and he was even pretty good at the cold. (The sweaters, etc.) Even in the hottest of Julys—regular July, before it snowed in July—he would hardly be found in anything less than a jersey crew neck. Air conditioners blasting and iced coffees in hand, there were plenty of ways to catch cold in the heat. Overconfident sandal choices led to freezing toes. And try sitting through a two-part, seven-hour-long play in the arctic tundra that is a Broadway theater. But there were some climates he couldn’t predict.

Summer temperatures at the poles started to plummet, apparently, as early 2004. No one had noticed, what with skyrocketing heats during the summers down south. Well, obviously some scientists noticed. But _David_ certainly hadn’t. Life in the city was life as usual. Of course there were climate marches, and GoFundMe pages for homes lost to extreme weather, but that was normal too. Everyone was focused on the causes they knew: refugees, the burning Amazon, the coral reefs; global warming. It turns out you can mess with the planet in both directions, though. Or maybe it’s that if you mess with it, you don’t get to make choices about how it fights back.

By the time the ice pushed south enough to affect Manhattan, David had already been in Schitt’s Creek for three months. Turns out, he’d gotten away just in time.

“How did we miss this?” David asked on that day a bus dropped them off in their new life. As he waited for the answer, the bus engine revved and revved as its tires failed to grip the ice patch that used to be the parking lot of this decrepit motel. David pivoted to glare at the offending wheels. They actually seemed affected by his disdain and squealed into motion. Finally, possibly for the last and only time, something listened to him.

The bus trailed off down the highway and David said a final goodbye to comfort.

“Don’t you remember Melody’s charity gala last month? Her save the earth thingy?” Alexis said, while effortfully dragging her suitcase over a snowbank. When had she put on a coat? David pulled his own sweater collar up over his chin and shoved his hands under his arms. His coat was packed away. Because it was July.

“Vaguely?” He had been at the gala, but he’d also been pretty high.

“Seriously, David, I thought you were the political one in the family. You had such a crush on Chelsea Clinton you even like, read the constitution that one time."

“Yeah and if you’d be so kind as to remember, it paid off."

"Well shivering is not a cute look on you, so, maybe read up about”—she gestured up to the sky and back down to the ice—“this.”

David took out his phone. No service. “Are you not, like, concerned?"

“About the thread count at this motel? Yeah, supes distressed.”

“About the snow. In July."

“I mean, it’s chilly I guess, but dad says it’s going to be worse at the equator in a few months.”

“You can wait out the cold,” his father called from across the lot. “But rioting, overcrowding, food shortages? Other people will kill you faster than the weather ever will.”

“Okay, dark much?” David snapped back.

“It’s our new reality, son. But hey, at least we’re in this together.”

David hadn’t seen the upside then. It would take a year to show it, but his father was right. They were better off up here in this small, strange, terribly named town than they ever would have been if they’d stayed put. Even money couldn’t buy much safety these days.

He thinks about that sometimes—what fate would have awaited them if they still had the funds to make this reality bend to their will. Could they have escaped to an island somewhere where the sun still warmed? Dorsey probably had a secret bunker. Maybe they’d be living underground by now.

Instead they settled into the motel, dependent on the kindness of strangers. And boy were they strange. And and welcoming and thoughtful, and a host of other behaviors that David could see no reasoning for. Without payment or reward, they housed his family, stocked their rooms with emergency supplies and non-perishables, _came by for a chat._ Sure, it was snowing in July, but this was the stranger truth.

“We’re lucky to be here,” his dad keeps saying, like he needs the reminder too.

To the mechanical hum of Patrick’s tanker truck filtering in through the thin, drafty walls, David bites into a high calorie ration bar—blueberry muffin, nothing like the real thing—and tries to feel like he is. Lucky. One of the lucky ones.

At some point he nods off, and when he wakes up it’s dark. The hum is gone and there’s a glass on his nightstand which he only sees by the fractured moonlight that’s caught in the water. The _water._ David clicks on his flashlight and watches that beam cut through the clear, still liquid. There’s a note set underneath.

_I heard you might need this. - Patrick_

Through a smile, he drinks.

**SECOND DELIVERY  
SEPTEMBER  
YEAR 2**

It’s a long wait to the next delivery—two months. But worth it when David opens the door and this time Patrick is the one to pull him in by the collar and surprise him with a kiss. As he melts into Patrick’s mouth, that past period of waiting paints itself over in rich hues of hope. He’d apparently been wishing this to happen again. He slides a hand up to hold at the back of Patrick’s knit hat and deepens the kiss.

This time, Patrick breaks it, pulling back and letting a breath out through his lips. He smoothes out the bunched wrinkles where he’d been gripping tight into David’s coat. He’s flushed, but maybe it’s not from the cold this time.

“Um, hi,” David says.

“Hi.”

“Thanks.”

Patrick laughs but his eyes are wild and wide. “I should really be thanking you again.”

“Go on.” David means it as a joke, self-aggrandizing irony to break the mood, but Patrick takes him at his word.

“I’ve been thinking about doing that for two months.”

David’s mouth is open, but nothing comes out.

“When you kissed me? It felt like my first time?” Patrick pauses, shiny lips, face open and vulnerable, then seems to correct himself and twist the expression into embarrassment. “Wow, that’s a thing I… actually just said to you. Basically a stranger. Who I just forced to kiss me without asking. So I’ll just, go now. Because, yeah.”

Patrick turns, and now David’s grabbing at his coat. “Wait!” Patrick lets himself be tugged back. “It’s… okay. It was a good kiss. Both times.”

“You’re joking.”

“No?”

There’s a decision being made on Patrick’s face, David can tell that much even if he hasn’t posed the question. “Can I come in?” Patrick doesn’t wait for a reply. He pushes into David’s room and sits down on the edge of the bed, facing away from the door, before David even has time to close it and join him. Patrick pulls off his hat, hair sticking up every way.

“It’s just, I have a lot of time to think, you know? Driving around all day. Not like there’s a ton of people to chat with. I mean, sure, I speak to folks when I make my deliveries but it’s not like I can go knock on all their doors and say: ‘Hey, I’ve been mulling it over in my head and I think I might be gay, any suggestions? By the way, here’s your water.’”

Nerves radiate off him as he wrings his hat in his hands and talks a mile a minute. David pulls a chair up to the bed.

“Except, well, in less words that’s kind of what I did to you, I guess. Or you did for me. That’s what I meant by thanks, last time.” Patrick looks up at him finally, on that confession. It cuts into David and burns, burns Patrick too maybe, as he looks back down at his hands. “Certainly brings a lot of clarity to why I left my fiancé and got a job as a rural water delivery man. Who knew it would take an ice age to figure this shit out.”

This isn’t a new type of conversation for David—1. He loves a good overshare; 2. He has seen many a sexual awakening unfold. But, anticipating Patrick’s delivery this morning, while David had predicted many possible scenarios (finally getting that slap, maybe a snowball to the face), none of them were this: genuine human emotion. The longing, the hurt, and the regret that unmistakably filters through Patrick’s tone sparks something inside of David. He wants to _help_. That’s what catches him off guard.

“There’s no right or wrong time to learn about yourself,” he manages.

Patrick’s head ticks up and he gives David a half-smile but there’s still something incomplete in his eyes.

“Anyway.” Patrick slaps a hand on each knee. “Revelation over, sorry for unloading.” David can’t help but laugh, relief and understanding forcing up a little pocket of joy.

“It’s just,” Patrick continues. “It’s wild how right that felt. To kiss you. I don’t even know you.”

It is wild, but David gets it. Nothing in life seems to go to plan anymore. Why would this be exempt? “Always happy to help,” he says with a smile.

“Hey,” Patrick says. “How’s it taste by the way?” David draws his eyebrows together in question. “The water? The first round of antifreeze they were testing out was, well it was just terrible. Safe, but tasted like drinking chlorine. They fixed it before this town got added to the distribution, I think, but, how’s it taste?”

“It’s good, yeah,” David answers, thinking not of the glass he had this morning with breakfast, but of the one waiting for him in the dark after the last time Patrick was here. David had written a lot of happiness off to water these last few months. So, yeah. It tasted great.

“Good, good. Glad to hear.” Patrick stands.

David doesn’t want him to leave. “You can always knock on my door. If you need to talk. Or, whatever.”

“Thanks, David.” Patrick looks apologetic; David wants to rescind the offer. “I uh, I don’t know if I’ll make it over here with my schedule, but. Just knowing that you offered—it helps.”

“Course.”

Then Patrick’s thanking him again and backing out of the room to do the things he actually, like, came here for, and David stands in his all layers at the door and watches Patrick drag a hose to the tank back behind the motel while absolutely not thinking about how nice it would be to have… something. To have possibility. To have Patrick knock on the door and kiss him when they both knew they meant it. He does not think about that until Stevie finds him ten minutes later, with a new arctic mystery-plant she wants to smoke.

“The weather isn’t going to kill us, these drug experiments are,” he says as he clicks at the lighter.

“Nah, Ronnie says this one is good. We trust Ronnie, don’t we?”

David coughs as he exhales. “Pretty sure this is just a chopped up pinecone.”

But something happens, because when Patrick finds them an hour later, they’re huddled on the floor of David’s room laughing at a joke he’s already forgotten.

“See you next time, David,” Patrick says through a wiry grin.

“Wait, wait, wait, Patrick, wait.” David scrambles up to stand. He plants his hands on either side of Patrick’s face. “Permission?”

Patrick grins, and nods. “Granted.”

“One for the road then,” David says, and leans in.

**THIRD DELIVERY  
NOVEMBER  
YEAR 2**

David would’ve loved to have spent the next two months obsessing over Patrick, but as fate had it, he’s gifted with a series of nightmarish distractions instead. At least he’s finally earned those end-of-the-world panic attacks instead of just feeling like an over-sensitive wimp.

October and November had always been hard months for David, even back in the States. A late sleeper, the early sunsets forced his days into an unhealthy concentration. There’s only so much dwelling one can do in broad daylight, and only so much one can ignore in the dark.

It’s as if the darkness starts manifesting, sometimes in ways so strange and unexpected they make David want to double over laughing. He gets fucking _scurvy._ He was under nourished, which is not shocking. The world wide food shortages limit what few deliveries they’d been able to get beforehand, and it’s not like beforehand included a box of fresh oranges either. The result of that exciting chapter is a two-fold horror. First, he’s prescribed a schedule of tallstrunt—morning and night now, he chokes down the pine needle tea. Second, Bob gives him a gun.

“Protein,” the older man had said on delivery, with a cheery shrug, like no further explanation was needed. And disappointingly, none was. This is his life now. He forages for tea and hunts his own meat.

He got wrangled into going out hunting with the group the very next day. Bob, Ronnie, Roland, even Stevie, who, from the looks of how she held the gun, had actually done this already and just forgotten to tell David about it.

“You ever killed before?” Ronnie asked as they made their way into the woods.

“Have I ever killed before?” David paused for effect. “No. Elton John used to have an annual hunt at his place in Windsor but that was more about the lunch. God, I really miss lunch.”

“That’s what we’re here for,” Ronnie answered, and David lost his appetite.

Still, he understood that the times demanded change. Maybe he’d find out that he was an excellent shot? When society rallied back into normalcy he could compete in the Eternal Winter Olympics. He looked good in a tracksuit, though not red so much. But maybe countries wouldn’t be around by then to compete for; maybe he could pick his own colors.

“You don’t have to do this,” Stevie so helpfully suggested as he had his first turkey in the crosshairs.

He pulled the trigger.

“Right in the neck,” Roland said.

David gasped. “It’s still moving.”

“Just let it bleed out.” Ronnie gave him a pat on the shoulder. “First one’s tough.”

Then he had to carry the thing home in his bare hands. At least Ronnie offered to pluck it for him, but he still had literal blood to wash off his skin. David had declared that the most horrifying afternoon of his life. Of course, until the following week.

He’d finally started to feel better, stronger, like he was actually adjusting to wearing five layers at all times and eating beans straight out of the can. The tallstrunt was working. He even woke up kind of early one morning in November feeling honestly rested. He went outside with plans to just _enjoy the day._

He dragged Stevie and Alexis with him; if he was happy he might as well make someone suffer. They bundled up and walked down the middle of the highway towards the town center sharing memories so distant and irreplicable that it felt like retelling the plot of a film.

Stevie saw it first.

“David,” she said, voice shaky. “David, look.”

A hand flew involuntarily to his mouth. “Oh my god. Oh my god, is he dead?”

There was a body of a man curled on the side of the road, covered almost entirely with snow, ice-white and catatonic.

“Maybe he’s just, like, asleep,” Alexis said.

“Yeah, forever asleep,” Stevie added.

“Ted says that hypothermia’s really comfy. That’s why it’s dangerous.”

David glared at her. “How is that helpful?”

“Well like maybe he didn’t suffer! Maybe he thought he was just lying down for a nap or something! Gosh, David, just trying to look on the bright side.”

“The bright side of a dead body?”

The three of them stared at each other and then down the long empty road. A gust of wind blew another layer of snow over the man.

“What do we do?” Stevie asked, quiet and small. No one answered.

They returned to the motel in silent procession. David hadn’t recognized the guy, thank god, but he still felt guilty to leave him out there in the elements, even if there was nothing to be done.

“No invitation to the séance?” his mother questioned when they arrived back. “You three look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Something like that,” he said, and explained the rest.

“I’ll get ahold of the Mayor, you kids relax,” his father said. By then his mother looked like she’d seen a ghost too.

That was twelve days ago. David hasn’t gone out since. There’s nothing to do inside either, so he stays up late with Stevie talking around the body and sleeps in even later than usual, and those few daylight hours shrink further and further out of sight. He catches up to the depression he’d been running from at the start of the season.

He forgets that it’s delivery day until that morning, and when he does, his panic condenses. He knows what he looks like—dark circles under his eyes, too skinny, hair too long. Would Patrick even want to kiss him again in this state? The knock comes, finally, but only after David burns a hole in the carpet pacing. He pictures Patrick, brown eyes and crooked smile, on the other side of the door just before he opens up. The memory gives him confidence, because he wants to see it live.

He makes a final adjustment to his hair, pulls his sweater smooth, and opens to a total stranger.

A hot total stranger, but still.

“Hey.” The guy smirks, not even hiding his attraction. At least David can still remember what it looks like to be desired.

“You’re not Patrick,” David says, before he remembers to be cordial.

“Patrick, good guy.” David reads his stitched blue letters— _Jake._ “Soft lips.”

So. That’s how today’s gonna go then. The cherry on top of his freezer-burned sundae.

“Soft—?” David repeats. He wouldn’t have pegged Patrick for someone that kissed, well, anyone but him. Definitely not a guy like this, all bravado and abs and stubble. That’s what he’d seemed to confess, at least. But a lot can happen in two months; how could David know what he’s been up to? It makes sense that he was just a rung on Patrick’s ladder up the gay climb. David was ground floor material, not the penthouse. The Ice Age froze him as much as anything else. He’ll continue to be who he always was.

“Well, just letting you know I’m here. I’ll go get started.” Jake flashes an objectively charming smile. “But hey, how ‘bout I come find you when I’m done, yeah?”

Casual, available, easy. Who he always was.

“Sure.”

**DECEMBER  
YEAR 2**

The gifts the Rose Family gave out for Christmas were elaborate and unnecessary. Never so much as the year they made custom snow globes, a tiny mansion and tiny figurines of the four of them nestled inside a garishly decorated winter wonderland. David hated his. It had the old nose. Every time he encountered one, he would pick it up and shake it. Shake, shake, shake, until all he could see inside was white, hiding himself in the flurry. He would set it back down and walk away before the snow settled.

He is inside of that now—a spinning, frenzied blizzard that had come out of nowhere to blind his vision and paint his cheeks with ice. He can hardly see the hand he holds out in front of him. The one thing David can see in front of him is breath as it leaves his body. He is quite skilled at blowing smoke rings, but this air has a different quality. It puffs out of him with a labored sound, hangs for a second and gets pushed away. How long has he been watching it move out and away?

There’d been a multitude of other ways David predicted his death. Volcano eruption, blowfish toxin; there was that night in Kyoto when he swore he was being stalked by Mothra. Death by snow globe was never his first choice. Um, blizzard. Blizzard, not snow globe—because he’s outside, right?

“David?” calls a voice from far away.

“David is that you?” The voice is closer. The voice is familiar.

 _Hi Patrick._ The words don’t come out.

“David, can you hear me?

“Mmm,” he manages.

“David, how long have you been out here?”

It’s been? He’s not. He can’t. Place it…

But he can feel—feel hands digging up and under his legs, brush the top of his head, pull his hood back up. A glove swipes across his brow. He feels his teeth hit each other in quick, sudden staccatos.

“David? S’okay. I’ve got you.”

He stands but his knees stay stuck in the folded position he was huddled in. He leans into Patrick and lets himself be dragged.

He wakes up in his bed, in pitch black.

“Goodbye, David.”

He wakes up in his bed, it’s light, he’s alone.

He wakes up in his bed, it’s light, his family, Stevie, and Ted all peering over him.

He speaks. “What’s going—“

“Oh, David!” His mother is camera ready. “We feared this was adieu!”

“Can you please stop yelling? I just woke up.” David pulls the covers back over his head and finds the sore stretch of achy muscle as he moves. Not a specific muscle, all of them.

“David,” Ted says brightly. “You got stuck out in the blizzard two days ago. You were hypothermic. Do you remember anything that happened?”

It makes logical sense, but it doesn’t sound like his life. He remembers being kind of cold on his walk. But, two days ago?

“I don’t.”

“Oh no, Ted, is David, like, Drew Barrymore now? David!” she screams. “My name is Alexis Rose, your name is David Rose. You are my much older brother. You are single and we have no money.”

“Thanks so much for those kind reminders.”

“Memory loss is a normal occurrence with hypothermia,” Ted adds. “I’m not too concerned that you don’t remember what happened as long as you know where you are now.”

Before David can ask to be filled in, Alexis starts talking, flashing her hands in the air and scrunching up her face. “It was sooo romantic David. That little button of a waterboy came running across the parking lot, practically carrying you, wrapped in this cute little blanket.”

“That guy really knows his first aid. You’re _snow_ lucky he found you.”

Hypothermic coma might be more appealing than whatever David’s woken up to.

“I was worried sick, dear. Where’s David, I said.” His mother looks to Stevie for confirmation.

“Uh, yeah I guess at some point you probably asked that Mrs. Rose.”

“God as my witness.” She crosses herself.

“Alright,” David says. “While I really appreciate your concern I’m still really tired so, can I like, have some space please?”

His father wrangles the troops. “Let’s leave the patient to recover.”

His mother exits with a forlorn look and an outstretched hand. Alexis boops him on the nose. Stevie gives him a closed-lip smile that never reaches her eyes. Ted stays behind and checks his vitals, takes his temperature, inspects his fingers and toes.

“You’ve got a bad case of frostbite on your left foot,” he says, hand on David’s ankle, turning it round in the socket. “Does this hurt?”

He’s tingly and everything hurts. “It’s kinda numb, maybe?”

“Right, well, we’ll have to check in on this. It’s pretty gnarly so don’t be shocked when you look down. But hey, I’m really good at amputations!”

“Oh my god, is that a joke?”

“Sure! Let’s hope so!”

Nothing much to say after that.

Like a revolving door, Ted’s exit brings Stevie right back into his room. She lingers at the doorway.

“Just come here, you’re being creepy,” David says and scoots up to sit against the headboard.

She sits down on his bed. “So, Patrick.”

“What about him? I don’t even know him.”

“Sure, sure, sure. That tracks. Except, oh wait—you didn’t see his face when he came running screaming into the office. Or how about when he kissed you goodbye on the forehead?”

David had thought that was a dream. “He should have just left me on the side of the highway.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“These aren’t exactly the clothes I’d want to be caught dead in, but—“

“Take it back, David.” Stevie hits him on the arm, probably harder than she means to. He forgives her.

“Ouch, god.” He pulls back. “Here I am on my deathbed, being attacked.”

“It was really fucking terrifying.” She looks like she’s going to cry. “Your lips were blue, you couldn’t speak. David,”—he can’t meet her eyes—“what were you doing outside?”

He tips his head back and looks at the ceiling. “I don’t know, I just needed some fresh air.” Which was, in fairness, kinda true.

He had just meant to take a long walk, see what the next town over was like. Maybe that walk was one he was hoping could bring him to a new home, a step closer to getting south, to rejoining the real world. It was wishful thinking, something he was never going to go through with, but an itch he’d needed to scratch.

It started at Christmas, when his dad tried to throw an actual holiday party for them, as if the date was something to celebrate anymore. December 25th looked the same as January 25th, the same as August 25th. David didn’t want to be reminded of how they used to host two-hundred-person soirees and go to sleep full of caviar and drunk on Champagne. He didn’t want to remember the gifts he picked out for himself and emailed to his father’s assistant to purchase. He didn’t want to remember the snow globes.

They’d skipped their first Christmas in Schitt’s Creek, which had been the right call. As an already frozen summer turned into an unthinkably colder winter and news around the world of the chill’s devastation slowly made its way to them, there was nothing to celebrate. They were sure the world was ending. There shouldn’t have been anything to celebrate this year either, what with the famine still waging and new reports of increasingly brutal fighting pockets around the world where the ice hasn't reached.

“We’re the lucky ones,” his father repeated, when David asked why they were celebrating this year.

His mother broke out her New Year’s wig, and that had been the last straw. To the sounds of her crooning “Auld Lang Syne” through the connecting door, David dressed in his warmest, stuffed a few granola bars and a Swiss army knife in his pocket, and slammed the door behind him. He just needed some air.

He turned left on the highway, away from town. Elm Something was a couple dozen kilometers away. He could make a plan when he got there. It was cold, but it was always cold. It was, for the record, also clear out, no clouds, when he’d left. He wasn’t prepared for a blizzard, because there wasn’t supposed to be one.

Patrick was probably just being nice. Probably would have stopped to rescue anyone.

“Okay, well, whenever you feel like telling me the truth, you know where to find me.” Stevie says, standing. She pauses at the door. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Thanks,” he says, worried he’s forgotten how to speak again.

She shuts the door quietly. He’s alone. He sinks back under the covers, throwing them over his head to shut out the daylight.

**FOURTH DELIVERY  
JANUARY  
YEAR 3**

David sleeps through Patrick’s next arrival. It’s Stevie that wakes him up.

“Waterboy’s pacing a hole in the ice, will you put him out of his misery?” She’s taken to letting herself into his room.

“He has hands. He can knock.” David blinks at the sunny room as Stevie pulls the curtains wide open. He might have slept in for a reason. The iceolated incident (god, he needs to stop hanging out with Ted) was just over a week ago and he’s not yet shaken his shame. If Patrick gives him one pitying look with those wide eyes, he might just have to walk into another blizzard.

“It’s two o’clock, David. This is late, even for you.”

“I’m sorry, were you elected official town timekeeper? I don’t think I voted in that election.”

“The worst decision I’ve ever made was to let you have your own room here.”

“ _Let me?_ Were you also elected Motel Tsar? Can you hold both those titles at the same time?”

Before her comeback can land, there’s a knock. Patrick found his hands, then.

David shouts “One second,” and jumps out of bed, pulling at his sweater and attempting to tame his hair on the way to the door.

Stevie stops him. “You’ve got something—“

“What? Where?” David doubles back to the mirror.

“Oh just”—Stevie makes a circle in the air—“everywhere.”

“My god.” He tucks a hair back into place and stomps to the door.

“Hi.” Patrick’s head shoots up from where it was just focused on the ground. His lips are parted and eyes pointed. Startled, perhaps, from the long wait as David took his time to get here. Now David waits, for pity to arrive in Patrick's gaze. But finds none. Patrick’s cheeks are red and David has given up on trying to figure out why.

“Hi. Yes I still live here, yes my life is still very sad—what am I forgetting? Oh yeah, thanks ever so much for saving my life.”

Patrick’s unreadable expression breaks open to reveal a smile. “Come for a drive with me.”

“No hello? How are you? Have you recovered from your deathbed?”

“Hello, how are you, have you recovered from your deathbed, will you please come for a drive with me?”

Stevie’s handing him his coat. Patrick’s turning around and heading towards his truck without waiting for an answer. And David, apparently, is following after.

“Where are we going?” he calls out as he traipses across the ice after Patrick.

“You’re coming on my rounds,” Patrick calls back without looking.

“I’m sorry, ‘go for a drive’ is not the same thing as, ‘come to work with me.’ Am I going to have to do physical labor?”

“No, David.”

“So then I’m just supposed to sit in your truck while you go off and do stuff?”

“There will, conceivably, be some conversation in the space between. Maybe a snack or too. If you’re feeling bold, you can even meet some of my customers.”

“I am not. I am not feeling bold. Tell me more about the snacks.”

Patrick’s up in the truck’s cabin now and sitting with the door open as he starts the engine. David looks up at him from the ground and feels far away. “Give it five to warm up.” So, no intel on the snacks then. Though—

“Warm up?”

“Yeah, I’m letting the heater run.” Patrick jumps back to the ground and shuts the door behind him. He breathes into his hands and rubs them together

“Heater?”

“Bit slow on the uptake, David. Are we sure you’ve recovered from the hypothermia?“

“Oh, shove it.” David whacks him on the arm.

“The thanks I get.”

David rolls his eyes.

“Hey,” Patrick says, instantly serious as he rests a hand on David’s arm. He waits until David makes eye contact to continue. “Are you though, feeling better? Feeling good?”

David blinks and tries to answer the question asked of him, not pour out a thousand other possible confessions. He is feeling better, physically. He also hasn’t left his room in a week, has hardly left his bed, claiming recovery, but he’d always been self-aware in his depression. When he wants to, he leans into the pain. Like a finger pressed into a new bruise, he watches the colors fade and grow back.

“Yeah. Yes. Thanks.”

Patrick squeezes once and lets go. “Good. Did they—what do you remember?”

“Not much. I—you. Maybe, right when you found me. But, not much.”

“Okay.” Patrick nods, short bounces as his eyes rake over David’s figure. “It’s—good to see you. To see for myself.”

It’s windy, so it could be that, David hopes it’s that, but Patrick’s eyes are glossy. Fuck. That’s David’s fault. There’s nothing to say except sorry, but he doesn’t think Patrick wants to hear that. In a desperate attempt to shift the mood, David shimmies and turns in a circle and by the time he makes it back around to look at Patrick he’s laughing, pinching the bridge of his nose and then running his fingers under his eyes to catch at the tears.

“If I knew I’d get a show I would have checked on you sooner,” Patrick says.

“One night only. Don’t get used to it.”

Patrick smiles before turning and climbing back up into the truck. “Should be good now. Come around to the other side.”

David does what he’s told.

It takes a minute, as David hoists himself ungratefully into the cabin, as he settles himself on the booth and adjusts his coat out from under him to sit comfortably. He finds his seatbelt. He starts to get… hot. Not like hot and bothered (though the glances Patrick keeps angling towards him are certainly tinder enough), but _heat_ hot. He notices Patrick has his gloves off, his hat resting on the dash and his coat unzipped.

“It works.” David does down his own zipper.

“What works?”

“It’s hot. It’s actually warm.”

“Pretty sure that’s by definition.”

“I’m never leaving this place.” David strips off his coat and gloves. He pulls at his sweater collar to air himself out.

“You might—just hear me out, I know it’s crazy—might want to leave occasionally.”

“Nope.” David angles the heating vent towards his face and lets the artificial air blow straight at him. “Nuh-uh.”

The first house they pull up to is only twenty minutes distance, a small single-family bungalow set back from the highway down a rural road.

“I’ll just be fifteen,” Patrick says. “Unless you want to join me.”

“Have fun, byeeee.” David sinks down and throws his head back against the seat. “I’m going to close my eyes and pretend I’m lying on the beach in Tulum.”

As Patrick exits, cold air drifts in. David makes a noise of protest and Patrick breathes a laugh before moving to shut the door. As soon as it slams, he pulls it back open. “By the way, the radio works. If that adds to the ambiance.”

David’s been living in some sort of penumbra, that’s the only explanation. He was made unable to see. In utter disbelief, he turns the dials on the car stereo through waves of static until hitting a channel with a clear, deep voice delivering, of all things, the weather report. There’s a radio in the motel office, but he’s never thought to turn it on. More than that, he never considered there was anything to pick up. That there were still people out there to host radio shows.

He listens to the temperatures across Canada, all sub-zero. He hasn’t heard the voice of anyone not his family or his neighbors in a long time. That thought distracts him enough until the program flips over into a song. He hums along to some old Celine classic, then Cher, then Blondie. This DJ is onto something. He loses time to the music and Patrick is already back, pulling out and onto the highway.

“Leave it on?” David asks, up against no protest.

They fly down the ice to Tina Turner. Patrick belts the chorus. David hides a laugh behind his hands. He would tell Patrick to shut up, but he’s _good._ He’s really good. David rocks his shoulders in time with the beat and lip-syncs into a can of window defroster.

No perfect playlist lasts forever—as he’s waiting for Patrick at their second stop, the last song transitions into top-of-the-hour headlines and David hears, for the first time, the global death toll. Fifteen minutes later, Patrick returns to silence.

“Snack time!” His cheery tone snaps David out of his trance. David conjures a smile and sits up straight, reaching out to grab for whatever is wrapped up in the napkin Patrick holds.

“Do I have to share this? Or is this my portion? It’s best to set expectations up top.”

“All yours.” Patrick chuckles.

“Correct answer.” David unfolds the napkin to a thick slice of sourdough and a handful of milk-white cheese curds. He looks back to Patrick, mouth dropped open. Back down at the feast. Back up. “Oh my god.”

“Are you gluten-free? Shit.”

“Am I _gluten-free?”_ He gnaws at the crusty bread and shoves a curd in his mouth, moaning around the combo. His eyes drop shut. When he opens them, Patrick is watching his mouth, eyes hooded. David swallows hard. “Um, where’d you get this?”

“Heather, she um, she lives here.” Patrick points a finger indirectly out the window. “She has goats.”

“This is.” David defers the sentence to chew. “The best thing I’ve eaten in a year.” He tears off another bite of bread. “I can die happy now.”

“I think we’ve had enough near-death experiences for one week, don’t you?”

“Not if this is my reward!” He downs another two curds.

Patrick is watching him still, what looks almost like pride hinting at the corner of his eyes. “Ready for the next stop?”

“Does the next stop have cake?”

Patrick switches the truck into drive. “Not exactly.”

The next stop has _truffles_ —homemade ones with dark, gooey centers and rolled in bitter cocoa powder.

“Ohmygod,” David says, mouth full. “Where do you find all these people?”

“You act like you haven’t had chocolate in ages.”

“That’s because I haven’t.”

“We’re only a few miles from the motel, David. You seriously haven’t had these before?”

“What? No. No, obviously not.” He savors another bite into the rich sphere.

“I know you don’t get out much.” David clicks in protest. “You know what I mean—but everyone, they all have their own things going on. Heather and her goats, Jacob and their chocolate. Mary’s—she made me this hat.”

Mary gives David a hat too, after Patrick drags him up to the door. The older woman smiles and pulls them both into a hug. “It’s so nice to meet you, David. Put a face to the name.”

Patrick’s cheeks go crimson and David feels pretty confident in saying it’s not the cold, but that doesn’t mean he has any idea what to do with this diagnosis.

“Black for you, no?” Mary asks, handing over a neatly knit toque and graciously halting that line of internal questioning. “Yes. You feel like a classic black sort of guy.”

“Well spotted.” He takes his gloves off and runs a finger along the purl line, feeling each curve of string. It’s neat and simple. It’s lined with soft fleece. “Thanks.” He fits it onto his head, pulls it snug down his ears. “How do I look?”

Patrick gives him a thumbs-up and Mary actually pinches his cheek. David spends the rest of the visit inside while Patrick works. Mary makes him coffee with real beans, not the instant stuff.

“You keep our boy happy now,” she says, as she sees him out the door fifteen minutes later.

David has no response but to look over to Patrick, currently coiling a massive hose back up onto the side of his truck. Patrick catches the glance and from twenty feet the grin he sends back feels but inches away in intention.

“Looks like that’ll be easy,” Mary adds with a hand on David’s shoulder.

David folds his lips in and turns the corners of his mouth up. He nods a hazy agreement, makes his goodbye, and heads back to Patrick.

“She gave me a hat.”

“I was actually there for that part.”

“Everyone is so nice.”

“I think they’re just happy to have water,” Patrick says, clipping the hose back into its final place. His side of the conversation is casual, unconsidered. David’s side carries the weight of a new reality, one he hadn’t considered before—one with fresh bread, and grandmas, and dessert. One where Patrick wants to spend the afternoon with him in a car with the heating on. “And anyway, I’ve kinda spoiled you with these three. Wait until we get to Fabian’s. He thanks me in haiku.”

An hour later Patrick’s climbing back into the truck with a sheet of paper.

_“No orchard's the worse for the wintriest storm, but—it mustn't get warm.”_

David raises an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

Patrick hands the paper over. “I told you—haikus.”

“But what does that _mean?”_

Patrick takes back the sheet and gives it a considered second read. “Hmm, yeah,” he says thoughtfully and looks out the dash up at the sky as if it holds some universal truth. “No fucking clue.”

There’s no way David gets out of this truck tonight without kissing him again. No fucking way.

The drive from the last house back to the motel is over an hour, Patrick having gone off his normal route to drop David back home. David tries not to feel like an imposition and remember: _I was invited out._ That whole hour is mostly silent, radio off and not even talking much as the memory of the busy day makes its way down the highway with them. David alternates between watching the road and watching Patrick. It’s snowing lightly, only visible as the headlights catch the features of each flake. Beyond that cast, a black void. It’s beautiful, and it’s eerie. More than once, Patrick catches David watching him, but never with exposing judgment, just a half-smile and a quirk of the head and a, “You good?”

“Yeah,” David answers, and means it.

Patrick pulls into the motel lot, leaving the engine running as he angles towards David with a question. David purses his lips and waits.

“Forgot what I was gonna say.” Patrick scratches at his hairline, finger disappearing under the edge of his hat.

“That’s o—“

“Can I walk you to your door?”

“Oh, uh.” David recovers from the interruption. “Sure, sure,” he says, instead of _no, because I’m never leaving this spot._ “Yeah.”

David bundles up. Slowly. He could sit in this cabin in the heat of the radiator and the heat of this other thing for much longer. Indefinitely? Alas…

They take a few silent steps, not touching, but they swing into each other’s space. Across the lot, he can see lights are still on in his parent’s room, in Alexis’s. They’re still up, life proceeding without him. David feels so different from when he left this morning—will they notice? Have their days changed them too?

“Can I ask you a question?” David tries. Sometimes there’s no graceful way in.

“Sure.”

“Why weren’t you here last time? Last delivery?”

“They take us off rotation, for rest, or—we don’t always get a reason. I wanted to tell you, but. Phones. You know.”

“I know. And it’s not like you owe me an explanation”.

“Still—“

“I met Jake.” A need to know mixed with the shame of asking.

“Jake?” Patrick laughs without seeming to enjoy it. “Ha, yeah. He’s—“

“Hot?”

“I was gonna say, a nice guy. But sure, sure he’s… conventionally attractive.”

“He said—“ David catches Patrick going nervous with curiosity, his step faltering and his eyes combing over David’s face. “Never mind.”

“What, David?”

David waits to answer until he’s at his door, holding the handle of his escape. “He said you had—what was the exact phrase? _Soft lips.”_

“Jesus, it was _one time.”_

“I mean, I agree.”

“David.”

“No, I’m glad you… I’m glad there are other people in your life you can do that with. Can’t come kiss me once every two months and call that a useful exploration of one’s sexuality.”

“David, I—“

“Sugar scrub.”

“What?”

“Raw sugar, a little oil, whatever kind you can get. Massage it in little circles.” David draws the tip of a finger up to his own lower lip to demonstrate. “Like this.”

Patrick traces the movement, lines forming at the corner of his eyes. “I—“

“It exfoliates the lips. In this climate? Don’t want to lose that reputation.” David turns the door handle with a click. “Goodnight, Patrick.”

“David.” A hand cuts across the frame blocking his path. He could duck under it, but. No. He turns around to face Patrick and it lands them in an intimate hold. David’s backed up against the wood, Patrick’s arm resting over David's shoulder and fingers inches away from curling at the back of David’s neck. He can see Patrick’s breath puff out and disappear as he speaks. “I haven’t been with anyone. Jake was one kiss. I know—I know I don’t owe you that. You don’t owe me anything either. I just, want you to know. There’s been no one else.”

The weight of Patrick’s hand settles on David’s shoulder, then travels the length of his arm down to his hand. At the seam where glove meets coat, Patrick slips a finger in to ghost over the base of David’s palm. It sends a purely Victorian shiver down his spine. David’s own breath puffs out and disappears, but Patrick’s not watching that. He’s looking down at their hands, where he’s rubbing a small circle on David’s skin. Patrick lifts David’s hand up, closer, up, close, and, where skin is revealed at the crease of the wrist, kisses it.

“Goodnight, David,” he says, and drops the hold.

Patrick takes his first few steps backward without turning around. Then he smiles to the left, and follows that curve all the way around until his back is to David and he’s gone.

“Um, what?” David says, to no one. Or, to Alexis apparently, as she appears behind him.

“Are you closing the door anytime soon? You’re letting all the cold air in.”

David twists his head around and shoots his neck out in accuse. “Why are you in my room? How long have you been listening?”

“Long enough. Woof.” She punctuates her words with a poke at his shoulder. “Why didn’t you tell me it was serious with waterboy?”

“How much do I have to pay you to never speak of this again?”

“You know I gave up late-stage capitalism for lent, David. So unless you have like, a box of chocolates hidden in that parka…”

As luck would have it, he does.

**JANUARY  
YEAR 3**

It’s more thud than knock, really. The sound of something sturdy coming up against the door, who’s to say what, who cares—the wind is absolutely railing today. Could be a lot of things. Thud. Then whoosh and howl.

David puts down his book and goes over to the window. He slides the curtain open and watches the storm. More thumping. He’s shocked this motel hasn’t collapsed or blown down. The walls seem so thin, so delicate, blocking out the cold (some of it, anyway) but none of the energy of the elements. Protection that provides no mental security. And it’s just so tragically decorated! He’d spent a lot of the first year here worried that he’d go to sleep one night and never wake up, at the fault of his inadequate shelter. But maybe it takes less to be safe, to stay alive, than David expected coming from his brownstone, their mansion, his driver, the private jet. Places and things don’t protect you. _Gag:_ people do.

A shoe arcs across his view. That’s—abnormal.

Because he’s bored, because he can, David goes to investigate. When he opens the door, the boot culprit has their back to him, leaning sideways against the motel facade. The guy is taking off his other shoe and throwing it clear into the parking lot, leaving him standing in the snow in a pair of thick socks.

“Hey! What the fuck?” David calls through the wind.

The guy does not turn around, simply pulls off his hat and starts on his coat. The hat is. That’s, David’s pretty sure it’s… or is he just imagining it?

“Patrick?”

Still, he doesn’t turn around. David quickly steps into his own boots and braves the cold.

“Hey,” he says when he’s rounded on Patrick and looking him in the face. Patrick’s wind-burned, red, frozen hands are toying with the side release buckles of his overalls, but he can’t seem to power the grip. “Patrick? What’s going on?”

Patrick looks at him, but the look goes straight through, no recognition. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. “Fuck.” David watches for a moment, just taking in the behavior. Patrick is drenched with snow and water, water that at the end of his hairs and eyelashes has turned to ice. He’s, well, he’s stripping, and David looks down to see the grey of his socks darken at the edges where they soak up liquid from the ground.

“Inside,” he says, a command more to himself than anything, aware that his audience has left the mental building, and starts to tug Patrick towards the door.

Patrick shakes him off. “Hot,” he says. And it clicks.

Paradoxical undressing—he remembers the phrase, so specific and weirdly unsettling? What was comprehensible undressing, exactly? Sometimes David wishes he could live in his clothes forever, never take one thing off. Especially these days, without a pedicure, a proper skin care routine, a truly hot shower. Who wanted, really wanted, to see their mid-back, or, god, a toe knuckle. Undressing is always a paradox. It’s also a symptom. Hypothermia.

After they’d let him recover for a few days, Stevie and Alexis cajoled him with the promise of hot chocolate (Stevie had found some old Swiss Miss packets in a drawer—yes, these were the glory days) into an empty room where Ted was waiting with a whiteboard, SNOW written in big black letters and underneath: _Safety Now, or Worse!_

“How long did you workshop that?” David asked, pointing to the board and flattening his gaze at Alexis.

“Or worse, David! Death is the ‘worse’!”

He listened to the whole lecture because, in the end, he doesn’t actually want to die.

“I know, I know,” David says, now pushing Patrick from behind, steering him by the shoulders into his room. “C’mon.”

Inside, he takes a second to breathe as Patrick stands listlessly by the door, swaying and looking up at the ceiling. David breathes deep once more, in through his nose and out the mouth, and gets to it.

“We should probably get you over to the bed,” he says, leading Patrick to sit. “Just gonna—“ He undoes the buckles Patrick’s stiff fingers failed to release earlier. He takes off Patrick’s socks, his shirt, wraps a blanket around him, towels delicately at his hair and face. Patrick makes no sound, no moves. His eyes flutter shut. David works quickly, he knows (thanks, S.N.O.W.) how crucial it is to dry Patrick off and warm him up quickly.

“No turning back now,” he mutters, and starts to strip too. Skin to skin, the safest way to raise body temperature slowly, thoroughly, without burning Patrick from fast, artificial heat. David flips the covers open and tips Patrick back under them.

It takes some real effort, maneuvering a semi-conscious adult male body around to rest close and comfortable. Every touch to Patrick’s bare skin David feels guilty for, even though it’s quite literally going to save his life so he’s sure Patrick will forgive him the ethical concerns. But finally, he’s tucked them both in. David hugs closer, heart to heart. Thigh to thigh. Every inch of Patrick is cool to touch. The air underneath the covers is starting to warm, though. He holds Patrick’s fingers flat between his palms. He tries to will it warm faster.

It’s late, maybe past ten. He can guess from his own cool runnings that Patrick won’t be coming-to anytime soon and he should probably just sleep as well. David tips his head down to look at Patrick’s face and finds it slack, eyes fully shut. He looks serene, despite the frightening reality. David wants that kind of calm too.

There was an exercise he learned, back in LA, when he was dating Yuval—after one too many enraged tantrums stuck in traffic on the PCH, Yuval insisted they pull over and run through a short meditation. Yuval was very attractive, and a pseudo-shaman, and absolutely wrong for David. And so was LA. But, he was there, and the cars weren’t moving anyway so he agreed and sat, chair reclined, in the parking lot of a Ralph’s while Yuval talked him through a body scan.

“Do you know that feeling,” Yuval asked, “when you’re lying in the grass and a ray of sun passes over you—“

“We live in LA, so, yeah.”

“David.”

“Mmm.” He zipped his lips.

“When you’re lying in the grass and a ray of sun passes over you and the light, as it touches your skin, warms everything in your body? Makes it melt? Now, close your eyes.”

David tried to squash down his skepticism and be in that grass.

“Imagine a steady stream of sunshine, flowing down from above the head into the body. As it washes down into the body, flows down into the body. Just dissolving, melting away any areas of discomfort. As the body begins to fill with that idea of liquid sunshine, starting at the toes, moving up from the feet through the legs. Melting any tension. Into the shoulders and down the hands, your body increasingly feeling at ease. The sunlight’s filling the neck…”

Air conditioner blasting through the car, David had felt hot, burning, full of molten light. He woke up an hour later to a text that said: _I took an uber home. You’re not right for my chi but I wish you the best. Namaste._ It wouldn’t be the last time he was dumped in front of a grocery store. But it had been the best nap of his life.

He tries to conjure that heat now, imagining a sky over them instead of drab ceiling tiles. It feels futile and naive, but he’ll take anything.

A soft “David” from Patrick, a breath on his collarbone, pushes a cloud in front of the imaginary sun.

“Shh,” he soothes. Eventually, Patrick’s breathing starts to even out. David pulls one of Patrick’s hands up to his mouth, kissing that same spot where lips have been burned into David for the last week like a brand, just at the crease in his wrist. Sleep, David conjures. And grass, and sunlight.

The first thing David registers is heat. He’s roasting, backed up against a wall of scalding brick. The brick shifts and lets out a sigh so, maybe not brick. David blinks an eye open and Patrick is tucked around him, hair nestling up against David’s shoulder, skin splotchy and red. They’d shifted in the night, no longer facing each other but back to front, and David is the little spoon. He kicks the edge of the blanket up and fresh air breezes in underneath.

David can feel every line of Patrick specifically, now that the initial heat has passed. He could just push back into the other body, burrow in. He could flip around and bring them face to face again, trace a finger up Patrick’s jaw. He pushes that all aside to push up and out of bed. He’s still sitting on the edge when he hears a quiet, “Oh, good,” come from behind him.

“Hi,” David says and twists around. “Hi. Morning.” He pulls at the sheet to wrap it around his bare torso.

“I made it,” Patrick says with a tiny smile, rolling onto his back. He sounds drained and disoriented but David hangs onto the tilt of his lips like a stair railing, grounding him in this present where Patrick is speaking, Patrick is alive.

“Made… it?” David asks, helpfully.

“Mm,” Patrick hums, eyes closing, still smiling, “to you.”

David bites his lip. David scratches at the corner of his eye where sleep has left him dry. David… doesn’t know what to do with that. But Patrick, it seems, is already asleep again. So, he drops the sheet back onto the bed and half runs into the bathroom to just—not be in that bed with Patrick anymore. He’ll have to clear completely out of this room, or otherwise submit to sitting in a chair staring at Patrick for the rest of time. But, he seems alive, seems healthy enough that David can sneak away for a bit. He gathers the courage to tiptoe out of the bathroom, leave a glass of water on the nightstand, and slip into his parent’s adjoining room.

With no television, his mother has taken to giving narrative, dramatic retellings of her past films. She’s already gone through four seasons of _Sunrise Bay,_ which has actually been galvanizing this town in a strangely sweet way, not that he’d ever admit it out loud. Today she’s workshopping her next feature, the utterly forgettable live-action _Goofus and Gallant._

“Based on the characters from Highlights Magazine: Fun with a Purpose,” she keeps correcting him.

“Yes, I know.”

“Rodgers and Hammerstein’s _Cinderella._ Eddie Albee’s _Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf._ Say it: _Based on the characters from Highlights Magazine: Fun with a Purpose.”_

“Are we really sure that’s comparable media?”

“This is not the economy during which to become embroiled in an intellectual property lawsuit, David.”

He throws his hands in the air. “What economy? Last week I traded one of your headshots for a half-used lip balm.”

“Well, you should have gotten much more for that, but how you spend your money is none of my business.”

They’re having that argument for the fourth time when Patrick knocks at the interior door and pokes his head through. Even with only a sliver in view David can see he’s pulled on a sweater from David’s wardrobe. It’s a lot.

“You’re alive,” David says weakly as he shuts them back into his room, sans Goofus' Mother.

“I am.” Patrick smirks with half the power of his usual attempt. “Thanks to you.”

“Do you, um—“ David tries to remember what he was asked when he woke up, what he wanted to be asked instead. “Are you hungry? Thirsty? Need anything?”

“No, no, thanks.” Patrick looks back at the bed. “How long was I sleeping?”

“Fifteen hours, maybe?”

“Cool, cool.” David’s not known Patrick to be this quiet, so he must still be feeling it. No teasing, no overly personal admissions. No… well. Anyway.

“Cool,” David shoots back with a finger gun. He shoves his hands in his pocket to avoid further insanity.

“I’m sorry, David.”

“Are you kidding me?” David blurts, too accusing, too concerned. “Of course not. Though I still don’t understand what actually happened.”

“My truck broke down.”

“So you walked through a blizzard to _here?_ Were you close by?”

“Kinda.”

“You wanted to, what? Like, even the score?”

“Even the? No—I just knew that if I made it here I’d be fine. You’d—that’s why.”

“You must be confusing me with someone else.”

Patrick shakes his head.

“You must still be out of it. You must have _made this choice_ while you were out of it.”

Patrick levels him with focused eyes and leans his shoulders in. “Not everyone is a friendly neighbor anymore. You can’t just show up anywhere and expect—people are scared. People are nervous. You were a little bit farther to go than maybe the next warm place but—you were the warm place I… Where I knew I’d be okay.”

Honestly shakes out of him. “That might be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

“God, I hope not.” Patrick laughs, but then catches the look David wasn’t able to hide. His look that says _no, not kidding. Yes, it is pathetic_. “Shit, David.”

“It’s fine.” David flops a lazy, ineffectual hand in the air and busies himself in the make-shift pantry. “You should get back to bed. I’m telling you first hand—you’re gonna need it. We can have Ted check you out later.”

“Ted, he’s a handsome guy.”

David flips his head around to find Patrick smiling, looking too self-satisfied for someone who almost died yesterday should be allowed.

“Alright,” David scolds. “You—bed. Now.”

“Aye, aye captain.”

Patrick crawls under the sheets and David heads into his mother’s room without looking back through the door as he closes it.

“You did not tell me you had a gentleman caller,” she drawls from over the top of her reading glasses.

“Um.” He settles a hand on his hips. “That’s because I don’t.”

“Felicity is in rare supply, David. When it arrives we must embrace it.”

“Alexis heard Keri fled to South Africa, so.”

“And I wish her the very best. She was nothing but gracious when she played Little Viv in that flashback from my youth in the circus.” Only then does she pull her book down. “But you know very well that is not what I'm referencing.”

“Well, he’s just in the other room trying not to literally die, so, there’s actually nothing going on there.”

“Whatever you say, dear.” She goes back to reading.

David sits down at the table in a huff. Resting his chin in his hands, he traces a water stain on the ceiling. He doesn’t last long before he stands with another huff. “Fine,” he growls and marches back to his room.

“Back to check my vitals already?”

David scoffs. “No. My mother, she’s just. Can I—?” He points at the spare bed.

“It’s your room.”

“Right. Thanks.” David sets himself up against the headboard and finds his page. He can feel Patrick watching. “What?”

“I like it when you’re in here.” Patrick says this like it’s easy to admit. It’s not even easy for David to admit he likes hearing it.

“Oh my god,” he says, filling the words with judgment. He lifts his book in front of his face so he can smile without consequence.

It’s two more days of that—just sharing space and the sounds Patrick makes when he’s sleeping. David gets to know them, know Patrick through his rest, and that something calm settles over him too. He’s been alone in this room for so long. Even unconscious, Patrick’s presence makes a difference.

Then one morning, Patrick’s up, recovered, like nothing happened. He’s full of energy and grinning at David when he blinks his eyes open.

“Morning, Sunshine!” It’s too early for this shit. (This shit being how fantastic Patrick looks in the morning light, wearing David’s clothes.)

“Mm, okay, so, you’re doing better.” David rubs a hand over his face. “Does this mean I get my room back to myself?”

“No chance,” Patrick says and sits on David’s bed. “Stevie took me to the Mayor’s house to use the VHF radio and I got ahold of command. I’m on sick leave for the rest of the week.”

David could dwell on this news, but there are more pressing matters. “I’m sorry, _Stevie_ took you?”

“Yep.”

“And no one thought, we should wake David up so he can stop this?”

“Nope.”

They stare each other down. David narrows his eyes while Patrick’s just get wider, more moony and innocent. New tactic then.

“You know there’s like, a half dozen vacant rooms here?”

“I do.”

“And you’re moving into one of them?”

“C’mon, David. This is way more fun. Like a good old fashioned slumber party.”

“Are you gonna call the Olsen twins? Because I usually only do that on camera. Or is it that you want to make out on my bed with my sister?”

“What? _No._ Why would you—“

“No reason.” David groans and turns over into his pillow but there’s no true escape now that he’s apparently living with the subject of his already-constant preoccupation.

It shouldn’t be a problem; they’ve already kissed. It could be simple really. It could be David saying: _Hey, now that you are of sound mind, want to get completely naked and back under the covers with me?_ But that’s tactless and creepy and not what David actually wants. What he really wants is just some acknowledgment, some signal from Patrick that David isn’t in this alone. He wants to know if Patrick thinks about him all the time too, in the space between these infrequent meetings, in the space between their two twin beds. And he wants to know what that kiss was about—not the first one, not the second, but that soft, tender press to the inside of his wrist.

As David doesn’t outright ask it, he doesn’t get an answer. And suddenly, it’s four days gone, and Patrick is due back at work tomorrow. They were four great days, sure, full of normal, boring delicacies: opulent laughter, delicious shit-talking, staying up late to stretch the day. Patrick is _nice,_ but that’s all it is. Because at the end of each day, after he smiles at David one last time, Patrick rolls over, back to David as he sleeps. No more teasing, no more overly personal admissions. No… well. Anyway.

David only gets more in his head about it. His thoughts shift and contort under the pressure of his want until he’s talked himself in and out of mutuality thrice today already. Like a glacier eroding under the weight of its own mass, he’s at risk of fracturing.

As a sort of going-away party that evening, Patrick builds them a bonfire, gets Bob to bring over some elk (it is what it is) he then barbecues, and they eat around the radiating heat of the flame. But it’s no candlelit dinner, no intimate romantic moment full of confessions and sealed with a kiss. It’s David and his parents and his sister and his sister’s boyfriend and his best friend, and Patrick.

David eats sitting wedged between Stevie and Alexis like his own personified rock and a hard place. He used to confess his attractions on a whim no more notable than the daily TV guide listings: What’s on today. But those are rare too, now. Actually, obsolete. Maybe he is changing with the times. He looks through the fire at Patrick patiently entertaining his father’s old stories about Rose Video. Everyone is smiling more this week, not just David, because Patrick spreads his attention across them all. It’s an amazing night. Like the one before.

And the one before that. After helping Stevie repair a section of roof over the office that had gone leaky (because of course he was handy, too) Patrick returned from the tool shed with a bottle of Wild Turkey he found buried underneath some tarps. They waited until it was dark to start drinking, but it was January, so they didn’t have to wait very long. Patrick carved them cubes of ice straight out of the ground, not because they needed them, but because they made it feel like something out of their past lives. Like grabbing a drink with friends.

Four in, David started arguing skincare, as always. “—so I’m not expecting the world to go back to normal, but is it too much to ask for someone to prioritize an organic toner? At the very least, a night cream?”

“Let it out David,” Stevie gestured with her cup. “Let it out.”

Patrick, leaning back in his chair, eyed him compassionately. “I’m getting from your tone that you think we disagree with you, but I’d be happy for you to achieve your skin care dreams. Overjoyed even.”

“I’m choosing to take the support and ignore _your_ tone for now.”

“Is he always this gracious?” Patrick looked to Stevie for an answer.

“Mmm,” she nodded and took another sip. “Obviously not.”

David pulled his chin back and spoke through his teeth. “Well, this is a nightmare.”

“I don’t know if she has toner but Brenda out in Elm Glenn makes a really nice hand cream. Super helpful with all the cracks I get from the cold.”

“I know Brenda,” Stevie added. “Went to high school with her son.”

“Does everyone know Brenda and her hand cream but me?”

“Technically I know Brenda and her son, not the hand cream.”

“This is my point!” David stood and threw his hands out to the side. “The world hasn’t actually come to a stand still. There’s—there’s _Brenda,_ and her hand cream. Heather and her goats. Fabian and his haikus!”

Patrick nodded sagely. “The makings of a modern civilization.”

David ignores that. “But we’re all trapped in our little houses, steps away from this, this product and no way to get to it. Blisslessly unaware. No way to even know about it, unless you happened to smoke weed under the bleachers with their kid when you were fifteen.”

“Thirteen.”

“God!” David plopped back down onto the bed. “I’m just saying someone could organize a system, a flow of goods, a—a trading post, if you will.”

“It is way too late to talk small business concepts,” Stevie complained

“Oh, as opposed to large business concepts?” David bit back.

Patrick waved a questioning hand. “I don’t think size matters here, David, if it gets the job done.”

“Well.” Stevie sent knowing eyes to David. “That’s my cue.” She stood. “I hope you find a suitable scale for your… partnership.”

“It’s a good idea, David.” Patrick said, after she’d left their room, as they readied for bed. “Centralizing all the local products and crafts into one system for trade and distribution.”

David hadn’t been aware he’d been pitching a concept, but he was too tired to argue, so he just said, “Thanks.”

The send-off bonfire starts to wane, and they’re lingering, just the three of them, in the dying orange light. David’s parents had left first, then Ted and Alexis. When Patrick gets up to go to the bathroom, Stevie shifts to straddle her log and raise one eyebrow at David.

“You have twelve hours left. Please put him out of his misery. Please put _me_ out of _my_ misery having to watch this.”

“What?” David stays turned in profile, but shoots his eyes to the side. “He’s just being nice.”

“Sure, fine. If that’s how you want to see it.”

“What are you doing?”

“He’s been living with you for six days.”

“Yeah, he was sick, so—“

“And now he’s not,” she interrupts. “ _Tell him._ Before he’s gone for two months again.”

“I don’t… I don’t know what his preferences are.”

“You are his preferences, David. Trust me.”

“He wears waterproof overalls. He’s not actually into me.”

Stevie sways her head sideways in dissent. “It’s the Ice Age! _I_ have waterproof overalls. _You_ have waterproof overalls!”

“Well, I don't _wear_ them.”

“You have got to stop coming up with excuses. It’s his last night. He did this”—she motions to the fire, the plates and cups scattered on the ground, remnants of a good meal—“for you.”

David’s brain freezes and resets as he tries to imagine that being true. He’d considered it but not let himself really believe. But the thoughts in his head, even when identical, always have a new bend coming out of her mouth.

“Talkin’ about me?” Patrick says, as he rejoins the group.

“Only bad things,” Stevie replies. “Anyway, I’m done for the night. Time to hit the hay.” She yawns exaggeratedly. “Night, boys.”

Patrick gives her an easy wave and sits down next to David, turning his gaze towards the fire. David shoots her a glare over his shoulder and she meets it with a sincere thumbs-up. As David turns back around, he tries to wipe his face of the evidence of having witnessed that. Luckily it’s pretty dark outside, so when he fails it goes unnoticed.

“David—“ Patrick starts at the same time David says, “So—“

“You go first,” Patrick offers.

“No, no. You, please.” David didn’t actually have anything to say to begin with, just couldn’t bear the silence demanding his coulds and mights.

“I was thinking about your idea—about the trading post. I was thinking generally but, also specifically, that—well. I was thinking you’re gonna need someone to help with all the deliveries and finding other producers and maybe I can do that. Help you run this business.”

“You want to help me. With my _business_ idea.”

Patrick nods and slides closer. “Yeah, I mean, like I said I think it’s really smart and necessary and—“

Instead of saying _okay_ or _what business,_ David cuts him off with a kiss. Maybe he knew they were always going to end up back here. Kiss first, talk later.

Patrick freezes, like he did six months ago, standing on the frosted doormat outside David’s room, on the day they met. He melts into it again too, like that first time, and then he practically pounces, pushing into David’s space, arms coming to wrap around David’s back, and his mouth eager and warm. David settles his arms lower, grabbing at Patrick’s hip and matching his gravity. How had David ever questioned this?

Patrick climbs into his lap, pulls deeper, and runs his tongue across the inside of David’s top lip. David moans into the building intensity and fists a hand up under the back of Patrick’s hat to grasp hair.

The fire cracks behind them, a sharp, piercing snap, and Patrick breaks away. He’s breathing hard into the space between them, just a few centimeters separating their mouths, but foreheads and noses still pressed together.

“Thank you,” Patrick huffs.

David breathes a little laugh. “Okay, you’ve got to stop with that.”

“It’s just I was getting a little scared that I was gonna leave here without us having done that. I thought—I just wanted you to make the first move. So you knew I wasn’t just trying this on.”

“I didn’t know if you wanted it either.”

“You didn’t—” Patrick pulls back. “What do you think I’ve been doing all week? Trying to drive a wedge between us?”

David squints. “I wasn’t sure what you were trying to wedge where, to be honest.”

Patrick pulls David in and nips. It drives something else between them, hot and unmistakable.

“Mm, well, I’m getting the picture now,” David kisses back. He runs a hand down around the curve of Patrick’s neck and thumbs at the stubble on his cheek. This kiss is not messy or frenzied or quelling some unquenchable thirst. Patrick’s lips are soft and gentle. They’re on the edge, a turning point—that’s the drive of this kiss: What comes next.

Caught up in sensation, they lose balance and tip backward off their log. They separate just long enough to stomp down the fire and carry the crockery inside.

“I can’t believe we slept naked together and I have no memory of it.” Patrick sits at the end of David’s bed—his bed? what’s about to be their bed—undressing.

“Trust me, living with the memory is not any better,” David says, then goes pale. “Wait, you know we didn’t… I didn’t—you were practically unconscious, I would never—“

“Hey, shh.” Patrick drags David to stand between his legs, holding onto the back of David's thighs. “I know. That’s why I came here, remember? Because I trust you.”

David blinks down at him, unable to directly answer that. “At least it’ll be a good story one day.”

“Yeah. I saved his life, then he saved mine.” Patrick crawls up the bed, settles under the covers and holds them open on one side. “Get in. I’m asking you to.”

David toes off his socks, takes off his pants, and by the time he climbs into the bed it’s already warm.

“I want to wake up to you again,” Patrick whispers, like he’s telling a secret. “That was—I remember that part.”

As it's confession time: “Stevie told me you kissed me on the forehead when you had to leave, after you brought me back."

"Did she now?"

"Mmm. I thought it was a dream. Nice to get the confirmation."

“Let’s both be here for this one then.” Patrick puts lips to temple. It's better than the dream. 

**FEBRUARY  
YEAR 3**

“Hi David,” a high-pitched, cartoonish voice greets him from waist level.

David’s just swung the door open to, well, technically no one. Because snowmen aren’t people. He sees the top of a navy toque peeking out from behind the hastily-constructed figure. He wasn’t expecting Patrick. They’d just said goodbye for two months, two weeks ago. But he’s here. Hiding behind a pile of snow. David’s so shocked he plays along.

“And what is your name?”

“Frosty, obviously.”

David leans into the door frame. It helps. “Mmm. Obviously, yes. My mistake. And what are you doing here, Frosty?”

“Oh, you know, heard about a cute guy that lived here, thought I’d check it out.”

“Patrick, seriously.”

“Who’s Patrick? I’m a snowman.”

“Oh my god.” David swipes at the head and it falls off, flops to the ground and reveals its maker. “Why do I like you?”

“Limited options?” Patrick stands, brushing his knees off on the way.

It hits David that he's not wearing a coat. The outside air makes its way past fabric to skin; he pulls his arms around himself. “What are you doing here?” It comes out more defensive than he means it and the crossed arms probably don’t help. But David doesn’t do well with surprises; he might start expecting Patrick to show up unannounced again.

“I’m sorry. I should have—” Patrick tries to take a step closer, but the snow’s in the way. He frowns. “You’re cold. Can I come in?”

David holds the door open and Patrick side-steps around the headless body. Inside, in silence, Patrick takes off his gloves. He takes off his parka, the waterproof overalls underneath pool around his ankles and he realizes shoes need to come off too. The ritual takes two, maybe three minutes. David sees the outside world slide off Patrick with the physical layers. He wants to take his own pretenses off too, but there’s nothing realistic to remove.

“Hi,” David breathes into Patrick when the show is over and Patrick has crowded him against the door, sweater to sweater.

“I missed you.”

“With that entrance, you could have fooled me.”

Patrick knocks their foreheads together. “I was nervous. It was stupid.”

David focuses on the sliver of floor he can see below and between them. “I kinda liked it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. It was… different.”

“You don’t have to lie."

David laughs and hugs Patrick tighter. “Okay, yeah, it was really fucking weird.”

Patrick bites into his jugular.

“Ow,” David squeaks. “I mean. Wait. I mean—what are you doing here?”

Patrick nudges a leg between David’s and presses in with his hips. “I’m here to see you. Two months is too long, David.”

David should feel lucky, he knows he should, to have found someone to enjoy, to laugh with and to kiss, in a world like this. The proximity fills him with longing for more. When their week together ended, after they woke up for that last morning together, still in bed, Patrick ran a hand through David’s hair and spoke with his palm flush against David’s cheek.

“I need you to prepare for the worst,” he said. “Two months. I’ll try for sooner but I need you to prepare.”

“Of course,” David answered, because imagining the worst was actually his special skill.

They hadn’t talked anymore about it, about what it was they were putting on hold for that time or what Patrick might expect to come back to. There’s no handbook for dating during the apocalypse.

David grabs onto Patrick’s hips. Patrick groans and bites again and then, soft, so softly, kisses the spot. He soothes the pinched skin with lazy draws of lip that seem to be born of a different person than the one who first attacked.

Patrick kisses down, down, and David claws at the molding. He tears Patrick’s hat off and tosses it across the room when he can no longer resist the grab for hair. They move to the bed where Patrick presses him into the cool sheets, but nothing can relieve the heat.

They doze off.

David wakes to Patrick’s round brown eyes.

“Um.”

“Sorry, sorry.” Patrick blushes, lightly pads a finger across David’s brow, and doesn’t look away.

“No, it’s, uh—was I snoring or something?”

“Nah. You’re just pretty.” Patrick winks.

“Don’t you have deliveries to make or something?” David kicks at Patrick’s legs but they just get tangled and used as bait to reel him in closer.

“I’m all yours for twenty-four full hours.” He rolls over to look at his watch discarded on the nightstand. “Well, twenty-one and a half now.”

"What is this, some ice road trucker booty call?”

Patrick laughs and says with an affect, “I missed you too, Patrick.”

“What is this though?” David twirls a hand in the air above their bodies. “What is this at the end of the world?”

Patrick kisses him below the ear, so his whisper lands like a dedication. “The world’s not ending, David.”

“Oh, it’s not, is it?” David rolls away so he can glare at Patrick properly.

Patrick’s just smiling, though. “No. It’s just really fucking cold."

David never considered living his life like it wasn’t one case of bad frostbite away from ending. Now he’s wrapped up in the arms inextricably tied to the thought: _It doesn’t have to be that way._ It’s going to take a second to adjust.

In the morning, when Patrick promises he’ll be back soon, maybe as soon as the weekend, David believes him. He walks Patrick to the truck and they kiss, there, standing on the high step and leaning into the defrosting cabin.

Stevie heckles them from her open doorway. David flips her off, but by the time he’s back inside and she can tease him up close he’s smiling too hard to care. It might be long term—all of it. Patrick, but Stevie too.

He fights back with a hug, pinning her arms down at her side.

“Gross,” she says. And: “I’m really happy for you.”

“I was running away,” David admits, holding on to the hug for too long. He doesn’t want to untangle and have to actually look at her while he says this.

“What?”

“That’s why I was outside. In the blizzard. I was trying to run away.”

There’s a long pause before she answers, and she’s careful as she speaks, putting space between the words like she doesn’t want to spook him. “Are you gonna do it again?”

“Are you kidding? I almost lost a toe. That is not worth it.”

“Glad to hear you have your priorities straight.”

“Mmm,” he hums. He squeezes tight one last time before letting go.

She scowls. “Is this what you’re gonna be like now?”

David laughs, but more than meaning to, it’s like the pot just boiled over in delight. The first thing he saw when he woke up this morning, the first thing he felt—Patrick’s face, Patrick’s arms. The wedge of cheese and the new blanket and the unused lip balm, sitting on the table in his room, samples for the trading post. Stevie’s own delight hiding behind her judgemental stare.

“Yeah,” he says. “I think so. Unfortunately.”

“You still could, you know.”

“What?”

“Lose the toe.”

“What?!”

“Frostbite. Takes a few months to really assess the damage.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Wouldn’t want you to get too comfortable with this whole happiness thing," Stevie says. Doesn’t suit you.” But she’s smiling, too.

**SEVENTH DELIVERY  
** **JULY**  
**YEAR 3**

“Ready to head over?” Patrick asks, as he lets himself into the room.

David nods and reaches for his final layer. “You done out back?”

“Yep. Last delivery of the day, funny how that worked out.”

“Almost like you planned it.” David meets him at the door. He pauses to place one hand on Patrick’s cheek, the other above his hip. And to kiss him.

Patrick hums into his lips. “Not a good time to get distracted.”

David allows himself another moment to savor before landing a final peck. They start towards the truck.

“When I left earlier, Jocelyn had just taken over the decorations so, while I’d love to disagree, I actually do need to get there quickly and assess the damage. I have this sense she wasn’t really grasping my frosted-fête concept. She had a lot of questions about the wistful berry branch accents that were terribly concerning. I mean, it’s really a straightforward concept if you ask me.”

“Very.”

“Alright.”

“No really, gotta protect the vision.”

David knocks into Patrick's shoulder, and even if the resulting stumble he takes is a fake one, it’s enough to satisfy the bit.

“Starting to rethink this whole, about-to-quit-my-job-and-move-in-with-you thing,” Patrick says. “Who knew you were so violent.”

“No take-backs,” David whines. They have mere meters left in their journey, but they hold hands anyway.

An hour later, creative control restored, the event kicks into motion. The First Annual Greater Elm Valley Region Frost Fair. They’ll have to workshop the title for next year.

It was Ronnie’s idea, of all people. She announced it like an inevitable fate at the town meeting last month.

“Like in _Orlando?"_ Silence. “Virginia Woolf?” She rolled her eyes to the side and slowly swept them back over the crowd. “Guess nobody reads anymore. What, books frozen shut?”

But ultimately, it had been an easy sell—not like anyone’s social calendar was full.

They’re set up along the frozen creek, glossy ice acting as the fair’s grounds. A gigantic, roaring bonfire sits in the center of events, salted so it burns in dazzling red and blue hues. David, having stolen a clipboard from a dusty box underneath the motel office desk, does a lap to check in with their vendors. Patrick had taken an actual ruler to paper to make him an old-fashioned analog spreadsheet. He winds through the guests and ticks his boxes like his life depends on it.

Tasting booths, custom crafts, and Ray manning an information table for the now-active Rose Trading Post. It reminds David of the Christmas market in Union Square, if he closes one eye and squints through the other. So, maybe it doesn’t quite pass, but its reaches are recognizable. It feels, if not like an actual past life, an adjacent one.

Like any well-organized event, fifteen minutes in and David has nothing to do. It’s simply going well. His mother has gathered a small audience and is singing through each individual harmony line of her college acapella group’s arrangement of “Cold as Ice.” His father stands in that crowd with a proud grin frozen in place. Alexis is helping Ted with the petting zoo. Stevie seems to have disappeared behind the mulled wine tent with Jake. David will wait a few days to bring that up; she deserves it.

He scans the crowd for Patrick who, now that he thinks about it, he hasn’t seen in a good half hour. He’s done a three quarter turn when hands snake around his waist from behind.

“Going well?” Patrick plants a kiss on the back of his neck.

“Mmhm.”

“Come with me?” he asks, and leads David away from the crowd.

They stop at the far western end of the festivities, where a smaller fire is burning and a thick blanket’s been set on the ice, plus two steaming cups and a plate full of treats. David lets himself be pulled down to sit. A few minutes and a few bites later, they shift so David can lie with his head in Patrick’s lap.

“Did you know,” Patrick starts, squinting up at the sun, “that each ray of sunshine is about eight minutes old?”

It’s summer, mid-day, so the sun rides high. It’s cold out, but bright. David’s cheek is hot, where one such ray crawls across his face from temple to chin. “So if I look at the sky, it’s kinda like I’m seeing the past?” he asks. The last eight minutes all look the same though, all look like this.

“Sure,” Patrick answers. "I guess you could look at it that way.”

If David could go back farther, would he? Is that even an interesting question to ask? A cloud passes over and hides the sun. His cheek goes cold, but manageably. He doesn’t need to answer that question—would he go back—because it’s not possible anyway. Time freezes the past. Patrick smiles down at him. David had been cold plenty in New York, but not cold and happy. Not cold like this. Fuck it—he will answer: No.

“What’s going on in there?” Patrick asks, tapping David’s forehead. “There’s a whole three-act play happening on your face.”

“Time travel,” David answers.

Patrick smiles down at him and slides his hand up into David’s hair. “Any wisdom from the woolly mammoths?"

“Yeah,” David reaches around to find Patrick’s other hand and tangle their fingers together. “They said wait it out. It gets warmer."

**Author's Note:**

> The first thing I wrote for this was the ending, after reading “Snow on the Desert” by Agha Shahid Ali. I love it so much I literally nabbed a line of dialogue. I hope he’s okay with that. Also in poetry: Fabian's haiku is adapted from a line in “Good-by and Keep Cold” by Robert Frost.
> 
> After I wrote the ending, not knowing what any other part of the story was going to be about, I went back and read one of my favorite fics, [When Morning Comes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/336585) by starlingthefool, a Merlin/Arthur story set after the apocalypse. If that seems like it might be your thing, I really recommend it. It’s nothing like this ended up being, but it was in my head the whole time. 
> 
> A huge debt of obvious gratitude to my main gal Virginia. If you care to peep the frost fair passage of _Orlando_ someone has graciously put it online [here](https://www.eckleburg.org/winter-2011-classics-the-great-frost-from-orlando-by-virginia-woolf/). It includes the phrase “extremity of want” with which I am obsessed.
> 
> * * *
> 
>   
> Thanks to MoreHuman, the better half of my writing brain, for the beta and much much more. And to this-is-not-nothing for the calzones eaten and whines drunk during this process. Another big thanks to our mods for not only a massive and impressive amount of organizing but also making this story better with their time and care and emoji reactions. 
> 
> And thank YOU for reading! I love to hear your thoughts, always.


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